Planning Your Center Director’s Classroom Rounds

For today’s proven management solution, I want to talk to childcare business owners about how to empower your directors to complete your rounds in childcare.

Typically, childcare owners make the biggest mistakes when it comes to their rounds because they think that the director should be making a round every hour, on the hour. Or the admin team should be making around every hour, on the hour. And that’s, in fact, a poor use of time.

Your rounds should be based on your business model. Your business model should have a classroom system that supports the rounds for your admin, your leaders, and your directors. This classroom system should support not only your teachers but also the rounds.

Here’s My Story After Making THOUSANDS of Mistakes:

#1 Improve Fast!

So to improve, I changed my checklist and used it based on my Classroom Foundation System. And so my checklist is to maintain my foundation system. My checklist is to maintain what I expect during the rounds. So now my checklist matches the classroom schedule, and my classroom schedule now matches the rounds. So when my admin team has to do their rounds, when they come in at this time of the day, they know exactly what they’re observing and what to look for, because for the next portion of the day to be completed, according to our standard, the first part of the day was interconnected with the next part. So let me explain that to you. So that meant that if my rounds were done at 10 am before 10 am, all breakfast systems, all circle time systems, all potty and diapering systems, and all morning arrival systems were done. And that meant that when she walked in to do her observation. She was observing that those systems were done so at 10 o’clock, whatever happened next, then she would observe that those systems were done at her next round.

So typically, we have a morning round and an evening round, and those two rounds support the classroom foundation system, and the classroom foundation system supports the classroom model, and the classroom model supports the overall business model. So then, what was my business model? Well, that is why it’s so important that you have clarity through a task management system on what your admin team is responsible for.

Every day, your admin team is your support help for managing your people and for managing your tasks. When you have an admin team, their task is to manage the people and your tasks so when you have a person that’s hired to understand that, then you have to make sure that your business model has the Task Management List laid out, so that your admin team knows exactly what’s expected of them.

#2 Manage Your Company From Logistics

And then you make sure that your Task List complements your business logistics. Your business logistics is like the timing when things when certain things are done in your organization, and then once you have those interconnected, it empowers your admin team to know that from 10 am to 11 am, I’m doing my rounds for all six of my rooms. So nothing else for my day is to be completed from 10 am to 11 am, except for my rounds, because from 11 to XYZ time, I have to submit this. I have to do this and that. So now you have a person’s intent around those rounds connected to whatever they have to do at that next portion of the day.

So your teacher systems are interconnected, because if the teacher systems aren’t done when the director does her rounds, or your admin team does do their rounds, then they don’t have what they need to do the next portion of their rounds. So now you have more peer-to-peer accountability, or it’s connected to the overarching business model, where you have your professional development plans, where you have your goal plans, where you have your teacher improvement plans, classroom improvement plans, admin improvement plans, whatever the terminology is, you understand what I’m trying to tell you because for you to have a thorough business model, everybody should know their role.

Everybody should know the components of their role and be held accountable. So if you don’t get what you need as a CEO, or if your executive team doesn’t get what they need, then that’s where now we have an accountability and training matter, and that’s when you move in that direction.

I think that you should come to the physical School of Systems so that I can literally show these lists and walk you through what we call simulation so that you can see it, understand it, do it, practice it, and then it will become an aha moment for you, and you can add it into your business model.

And as always, remember, if you manage the childcare business that you love, you will love the childcare business that you manage.

Planning Your Center Director’s Classroom Rounds

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